‘Man Up’ Proves That Lake Bell Is One of Our Best RomCom Actresses

I underestimated Lake Bell for a long time. It’s my own fault, really, though I refuse to get too down on myself for not watching Boston Legal or the Evan Longoria movie Over Her Dead Body. But the first time I recall seeing Lake Bell in anything, it was the 2009 Nancy Meyers film It’s Complicated, and there I allowed the nature of her role (arm-candy second-wife to Alec Baldwin; obstacle to Meryl Streep) to let me draw conclusions about the actress. Beautiful but interchangeable. Big mistake.

While Bell’s role on the comedy series Children’s Hospital forced me to raise an eyebrow (that show keeps seriously good company when it comes to comedy talent), it wasn’t until 2013’s In a World that I fully turned my fool self around. That’s the movie that Bell wrote, directed, and starred in, and after it made a splash at Sundance that year, I saw it in theaters down here at sea level, and to my welcome surprise, it ended up being one of my favorite comedies of that year. A romantic comedy with some real ideas behind it, and a commitment to its characters that overrides the requirements of the rom-com genre.

Man Up, which is streaming on Netflix, was not written or directed by Lake Bell and thus does not share most of In a World‘s genre-defying qualities. But for a movie that steadfastly hews to convention, Bell and co-star Simon Pegg do a great job making it incredibly likeable and watchable.

The idea is pure rom-com contrivance. Unlucky-in-love Nancy (Bell), through a series of contrivances, ends up being mistaken by Jack (Pegg) for his blind date, and so begins an evening of bar-hopping and zippy chemistry that manages to hit a lot of the When Harry Met Sally marks that have defined the genre for two decades now. One structural mark in the film’s favor that makes a big difference is that instead of waiting until the end of the movie for the secret to reveal itself, it comes a bit before the middle. Man Up is confident enough in its characters (and the people playing them) that it’s eager to explore what comes next.

The biggest story here is Lake Bell, though. Sporting a British accent that this Yank found rather convincing, she gives a performance that’s both magnetic and relateable, and as a result she ends up elevating a movie that otherwise would have been pretty forgettable. Pegg is wonderful opposite her, as well. It almost makes you want to retroactively plug Bell into the old Edgar Wright movies and see how she’d fit in.

In the interests of not getting left behind, I should say that Lake Bell will be a voice in the upcoming Secret Life of Pets, and she’s working on her next writer/director effort, What’s the Point, which will be a comedy about matrimony co-starring Ed Helms. There for it.